The mold had grown thicker as they went, hanging like the tendrils of some odd spider, threatening to grapple and suck from them their dissolved innards. They had to, in some places, move it to one side with their arms, loathing the wet and clammy feel of the grayish yellow flesh, but not ready to turn back and seek out other directions.
The passage seemed to continue infinitely, certainly more than was required for a prison and rooms of torture. This place must have served other purposes, most certainly those dark and sinister. Bits of debris found scattered here and there were most certainly bones—human bones—and likely the remains of digits from hand or foot. It was as if the entire British army had come here and been tormented by, Ethan supposed, Captain Black.
Abby suddenly took Ethan’s hand as they walked, and he was glad she had. Her hand was alive and warm and part of Abby, unlike this maze of passages and evil rooms. It was near an hour that they had been walking when they came to a sudden end. The passage, having no doors, suddenly terminated in plated iron riveted directly into what Abby was sure the skin of the very mountain itself. Her heart dropped at the sight, and she just stood there, trying to hold back a rushing need to weep. Ethan seemed to be doing the same thing, but with more grace. They stood there, hand in hand, mourning their situation for many moments, and then the floor snapped.
It was a loud retort in the dead silent passage, the sound of a large branch snapping from a tree. At the same instant, the floor sagged suddenly many inches beneath them, and Abby chirped a surprise scream. Then the entire thing gave way and they fell in a shower of ancient wet lumber to a dirt floor below.
Abby screamed again, this time clearly in pain. She had landed on her feet, but not quite squarely, the fragments of wood twisting her foot. She collapsed to her side and grabbed her shin, rolling back and forth in agony reciting every curse she had ever heard in her nineteen years of life.
Ethan managed to land mostly on his feet, where an explosion of white pain shot through his bruised heels and out the top of his head. He grunted loudly as the air rushed from him and he sat hard. A growl of anguish and pain came from him, slowly building in volume until he finally screamed and pounded the floor with his fists.
“Ethan…I think I’m hurt this time…” Abby said softly, her eyes squeezing tears from her closed lids.
“I’m coming; give me a sec. Damn that hurt!”
“I think I broke my ankle. Fuck!” Her shout echoed along the passage.
Ethan crawled over to her on his stomach and lifted the cuff from above her shoe. It looked solid, but a blue baseball was slowly replacing her ankle. He quickly untied her shoe, and pulled it open. “I don’t think it is broken, but it looks like it is. Did you twist it?”
“Yeah, I landed on a piece of wood.”
“It could be a tear, not sure. We will have to bind it after it is done swelling.”
“Are you hurt?”
“I don’t think so… I will need a few minutes before I can walk again, though.”
“Madison, are you hurt?” Abby asked while prodding at her ankle.
Ethan began searching around them with the flashlight. Each second that had passed without an answer made his search more and more frantic. “Madison! Where are you?” he shouted.
“Where is she?” Abby asked frantically. “Wasn’t she right behind us?” Her voice was becoming accusatory and angry.
“Madison!” Ethan shouted again. “She was. Maybe she didn’t fall…” He scooted backwards, still sitting, and searched the above with his light. “Madison!”
“Find her, Ethan! She’s like a child. We can’t lose her! Not Madison!”
“I’m looking!” Ethan shouted at her. “Madison!” His voice went hoarse.
“Madi!” Abby screamed. “Oh my God, not Madison…Madison!” She hung her head and began to weep, weep for the poor, gentle Madison, weep for the pain of her ankle, and weep for their situation. She chose that moment to have it out, to let go the weariness and pain, the fear and self-pity.
Ethan crawled up beside her and held her as close as he could, cooing and coddling her, allowing silent tears to fall from his own eyes. He had not particularly known Madison, she was Abby’s friend, but he could hear Abby’s loss in her sobbing, he could tell her soul lie twisted to a painful place. Therefore, he wept with her, for her pain, for her loss, for her sake.
After many minutes, the pain had subsided in Ethan’s feet, and he felt confident he could walk again. Abby had shown signs of ebbing, and he leaned her back against the wall gently. “I have to check that ankle.”
“It sort of burns, tingles like it was asleep,” she said after sniffing and running a sleeve across her face.
Ethan put the light on it and her ankle purple and angry. He was no doctor but thought that if it had been broken, she would be in much more pain than this. “Think you can try standing on it?”
She scooted her back up the wall, bobbling the foot in front of her until she could rest it easily on the ground. She put some weight on it, and it seemed to hold. “It doesn’t hurt very much, but it feels wet and I don’t know…sloppy?”
“That’s good; no break but I am pretty sure there was a tear, so it would be best if I help you walk until we get you to a doctor.”
“Why don’t you look in the wood there, see if there is enough of a piece to make a cane or a crutch?”
Ethan looked around him as if the wood had just suddenly appeared. He kicked some of the debris around until he found a length sturdy enough for a cane. “This might work. Let me work some of the edge off…” He turned the wood over and began working it against the brick wall, sanding it roughly down and into a rounded top. The other side he worked into a flat surface to give it a bit more stability. Satisfied with his work, he offered it to Abby, “Here, try this.”
Abby was able to hobble around well enough for them to continue. The corridor was much like the one above, but this time the floor was dirt instead of the wood planking. The outer end of the passage was also covered in iron plating, and it continued back in the direction from which they had come.
“What do we do about Madison?” Abby asked with the slightest glimmer of hope in her eye.
“We go and get help. We bring the police or the army or whoever, and we take this damn place over until we find her.”
“She is going to be so scared by herself,” Abby said sadly.
“I didn’t even notice she was gone until you said something.”
They started down the passage, no longer holding hands to allow for use of the cane.
“Do you think we will find her again?” Abby sounded on the verge of crying again.
“I think so. Depends on how fast we actually get out of here and bring help back.”
They came to a cross section where they could go left or continue straight as they had above. Ethan looked at Abby and could see the pain on her face, the small beads of sweat collecting on her brow. “Does that hurt now?”
“Yeah,” she huffed. “A little now.”
“Let me see what we have for pain.”
“I could use something to eat and drink. You don’t happen to have that in there, do you, my little Boy Scout?”
He did not answer but offered her an energy bar, the kind that mountain climbers or long distant runners eat for quick energy.
“Are there a lot of calories in this?” she asked him.
He rolled his eyes at her. “They are all good calories; just eat it. I have three bottles of water also, and nine more of those bars. Here we go, and some Tylenol for that ankle.” He offered her a bottle of water and a fist closed around some pills.